Category: Tips

Your offerings are outstanding, your marketing strategy is sound and your content is part of the conversation — yet your numbers don’t reflect the kind of deal-closing relationship you want to have with your customer base.

If this sounds familiar, it might be time to consider teaming up and using brand partnerships to boost your content marketing.

Just as an introduction from a trusted common friend can help you be more trusted by a new acquaintance, introducing your brand through shared content with another brand can help that audience trust you more. “It’s been shown that average people (like you and me) trust influencers’ opinions nearly as much as our friends’ and families’ opinions,” Chris Ake writes at Forbes.

Here, we look at how strategic brand partnerships are built and how to use yours to improve the quality and reach of your content.

What Can Brand Partnerships Do For Your Business?

In a strategic brand partnership, two or more companies work together to create value — and to spread the word of that enhanced value to every participants’ target audience, as Gregory Pollack notes at MarketingProfs.

“For a true strategic partnership brand marketing program to work, both brands must complement each other and deliver similar customer profiles,” Pollack writes. “Even more importantly, the partnership must sit within the lifestyle and user experience of the customer.”

Partnership brand marketing isn’t a new idea. As Christian Daugstrup at Thunderbrand points out, one of the best-known examples of a brand partnership is the cereal box with a branded toy inside. The combination boosts sales of both the cereal and the toy, making both companies happier.

In the digital era, marketing partnerships look a bit different. Not only are the products or services often less tangible than a box of cereal and a toy, but companies are no longer limited to partnering to distribute the product or service itself. They can partner to distribute content, too.

Brand Partnerships for Content Marketing: Key Considerations

Today, many consumers are already loyal to the brands they love, and the anonymizing influence of social media — where consumers can curate the content they see — can make it tough to break into new markets.

This tough field is where content marketing partnerships shine. Natalie Staines, director of marketing at r2i, recommended using brand partnerships to generate leads. “When one target audience is totally saturated, leveraging another brand, and the peer influence of its followers, is an almost necessary means to an end,” Staines says. Partnering with the right brand can help your company reach an audience that thinks it’s not interested in new content — until it sees what you have to offer.

To identify promising potential partners:

• Look for a non-competitor. At a minimum, your partner shouldn’t directly compete with your product or service. “Better yet, they compliment you,” says Braveen Kumar at Shopify.
• Pay attention to the audience. Different customer groups respond differently to different forms of social media, content and accessing options. For instance, Chris Wilson at GMA notes that age is a huge determiner of the success of a digitally based loyalty program. Make sure your partner is targeting the same demographics you are in ways that work for that audience.
• Know your own needs. “Before getting to the tactics on a content partnership, it is important to understand the business need that is driving the partnership,” Demand Media’s Felicia Alexander tells Scribble Live. “Are you looking to attract a new audience, increase time on site, drive new sales?” Seek partners who can help you meet your needs just as you help the partner meet theirs.

For many companies, the dream partner is a brand that meets their every criteria for an ideal partnership — and who feels entirely out of their league. Too often, the result is a partnership that can never succeed because it is never made.

“I think some people are afraid to ask for help from other content creators,” says Jess Ostroff, managing editor at Convince & Convert. “They see it as invasive, pushy, or they’re not confident enough in their own content to be willing to share it.”

To solve this problem, Ryan Kettler at BootSuite recommends doing three things:

• Read the blog posts and comments at potential partners’ sites to understand their audience and whether you can contribute to the conversation with that audience.
• Stock your own content channels with quality information that adds to the conversation.
• Offer valuable content with a creative twist or voice that’s all your own.

Once you find the right partner, Kettler recommends being thoughtful, reliable and promotional. Collaborate for results that help both partners, keep your promises and promote your collaborative content as thoroughly as you would your own.

Above all, be authentic. “I try to be as natural as I can on first-time calls,” says HubSpot’s Christine White. “This gives the potential partner a sense of my personality … it loosens the vibe and allows for a more relaxed conversation, which means you can really get to know each other and your goals.”

Case Studies: Outstanding Content Marketing Partnerships

Another way to ensure you’re building a solid strategy for a branded content marketing partnership is to analyze the success of other online brand partnerships. Here are some examples of content marketing partnerships done well.

1. National Geographic and Tourism New Zealand

National Geographic and Tourism New Zealand teamed up to provide “The Ultimate New Zealand Experience,” featuring video directed by Bryce Dallas Howard. The combination allows Tourism New Zealand to leverage National Geographic’s reputation for stunning visuals and thoughtful coverage of the natural world and current events, reaching an audience that might not otherwise have thought of New Zealand as a rich cultural getaway.

2. Vox and Spotify

In a partnership that only exists in the digital world, Vox and Spotify teamed up to create “The Secret to Your Discover Playlist? A Cyborg Approach.” Consumers who love Vox’s deep dives into obscure topics are drawn into the details of obscure 1970s synth-funk, while those who love Spotify enjoy learning more about exactly how the app’s Discover Weekly tool works.

3. Visit Seattle and Sundance TV

When you’re already committed to creating audiovisual works with a short film feel, there’s no better place to show them off than to a film-obsessed audience. Enter Visit Seattle’s collaboration with Sundance TV, “Five by Five.” In it, the Visit Seattle spots take on the feel of short documentaries. Each was shot in a single day and emphasizes the storytelling dynamic of film over the selling point of the city in a way that nevertheless makes both points unforgettable.

4. The Wall Street Journal and Chase

Financial mainstays like The Wall Street Journal and Chase would seem, at first, to have everything going for them when it comes to being a household name. Yet the two established a partnership to speak to a younger audience with “Inside the Moment,” a digital visual experience that allows visitors to explore 360-degree views of San Francisco, New Orleans and Miami. Each features deep dives into those cities’ iconic neighborhoods. The result is a lush yet approachable feel that underscores the value of smart finance.

5. Fatherly and Airbnb

Content site Fatherly provides parenting insights and advice; space-sharing company Airbnb wants to encourage travelers to find the perfect destination. The two paired up in “This Photographer Proves a Quick Family Getaway Can Become an Uncharted Adventure,” a photo essay in which Airbnb locations provide the backdrop for a family’s weekend trip up the Oregon coast, discovering that “it’s best to vacation like you live there.”

Takeaways for Marketing Directors

Why do each of these examples stand out? They combine two brands with overlapping audiences and a shared vision — and they do it in a way that not only informs but inspires.

As inspirational content continues to grab the attention of viewers, the best strategy for boosting content may be to seek out brand partnerships that inspire, too.

Images by: rawpixel, Brooke Cagle

“Siri, find a good Japanese restaurant in Atlanta.”

“Cortana, how do I incorporate photos into a spreadsheet?”

“Alexa, give me a recipe for pancakes.”

“OK Google, can a giraffe breathe and swallow at the same time?”

For years, companies have focused their online content marketing on text-based searches. What do people type when they’re looking for a product or service like ours, they ask, and how do we capture those phrases in a way search engine algorithms notice?

As voice search tools like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google’s Voice Assistant have become more convenient and intuitive, however, customers use them more often — and they’ve changed the way they phrase queries to account for the voice-activated nature of the search tool.

Here, we look at how the move from text to voice search is changing our approach to content, and how to make changes that will capture both voice and text searchers.

How Voice Search is Changing Our Approach to Content

Voice-activated search tools are pervading our homes and workplaces. Studies estimate that by 2022, more than half of US households will have a voice-activated speaker device, according to Sarah Perez at TechCrunch.

But the biggest voice device expected to change the way we search is the smartphone. In mid-2016, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that 20 percent of mobile queries were voice-based.

The numbers have grown since, making voice search ever more commonplace and affecting which results rise to the top of those searches.

To complicate matters further for content teams, every device uses a different search engine or combination of search engines from which to draw knowledge, according to Britney Muller at the Content Marketing Institute. For instance, Google Home and Google Voice Assistant both use Google’s data, Siri and Cortana rely on Bing, and Alexa defaults to a combination of Bing and Amazon data.

There’s still no single strategy that will optimize content for every voice device. Focusing content on the way the use of voice changes both the query and the response, however, can help your content rise to the top of voice search results.

Make Keywords Conversational

Text-based searches tend to cut a query down to its most important words. Voice-based searches, by contrast, are structured much more similarly to the way we speak.

“If I were to approach an employee in a pet food store, I wouldn’t typically ask ‘best pet food dog?’” Angus Ewart writes at Small Business BC. Instead, the question would be phrased as “What is the best pet food for my dog?” or “What dog food do you recommend?”

When voice search first debuted, it had a much harder time with recognizing speech and matching it to relevant answers. Voice search’s word error rate was over 20 percent six years ago, but is eight percent or less today, AJ Agarwal writes at Forbes. This means that content marketing teams don’t have to account for misspoken or misinterpreted words anymore — but they do still need to account for the many ways that people might voice a particular question.

Crucial Context That Voice Searches Provide

The good news? Good keyword research has always been about putting a human reader first, says Julia McCoy at the Content Marketing Institute, and good keyword research for voice search optimization is no different.

Optimizing keywords for voice search starts by collecting keywords that surround a target word or phrase. To find the target, consider which questions your customers might ask that would lead them to your company. Don’t skip the question words: Uses of “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how” jump dramatically when a query moves from text to speech, says Neil Patel.

Voice search also demands optimization for long-tail keywords, Susannah Noel writes at Clariant Creative. Traditionally, keywords have been short, as the majority of text-based searches are only two to three words long, Purna Virji at Microsoft points out. Voice-based searches, however, are often longer; they’re less likely to be two words and more likely to be longer than four words.

These wordy questions provide valuable context about the searcher’s needs, interests and goals, Ian Kelley writes at Vital. That context is often missing from text-based searches. For that reason, much content aimed at capturing text searchers often skips that context, too.

For instance, Kelley notes, a text search for “best laptops for college students” doesn’t indicate on what basis the searcher wants to determine what’s “best.” Articles and blog posts written to target this phrase may choose their own “bests,” which may not match the customer’s interests.

By contrast, “What are the best-priced laptops for college students?” is a request for comparisons based on cost, which a voice search can more easily provide — and which content marketers can more thoughtfully target.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel to Accommodate These Searches

Does this mean you need to write new content for every long-tail variation on every question that might bring voice searchers to your website? Not necessarily. Brian Dean at Backlinko analyzed 10,000 voice queries and responses to discover that very few voice results had the exact words of the query in their title tag. “Therefore, creating individual pages for each voice search query doesn’t appear to be an effective voice search SEO strategy,” Dean says.

Instead, adapting existing content to address some of the most common long-tail questions may be more effective than dashing off a new, unoriginal piece of work for every possible combination of words — especially since the average word count on a voice search results page was 2,312 words, according to Amanda Zantal-Wiener at HubSpot.

Turning existing content into value-packed longform content may do far more for voice search results than creating endless streams of new pages.

Get Specific

Fifteen percent of new Google voice searches every day are for combinations of words that haven’t been Googled before, according to Heather Horton at Ecrubox Digital. That’s because the use of spoken language changes the way we phrase queries — and the contexts in which we make them.

A Google case study revealed that most voice search queries share three common elements:

• They’re more likely than text queries to be about an action-based, on-the-go topic. Think users looking for store hours or directions to a specific location. In fact, one in three mobile searches are local in nature, according to DialogTech’s Christie Huber.
• They’re less likely than text queries to deal with sensitive information.
• They don’t include searches for sites or information that require user interaction, like an online catalog.

In addition to understanding what people ask in voice searches (and keywording accordingly), understanding how those questions are asked — on the go, impersonally, with a quick response in mind — can help companies structure their content to provide the response searchers are looking for, says Elizabeth Bush at the Enveritas Group.

When the “how” aspect of questions is understood, the “how” of answers can be improved. Dean’s Backlinko study found that short and simple was the way to go: On average, voice search results were 29 words long and were written at a 9th grade reading level.

Finally, as Tom Salvat notes at Concured, specificity can help companies rise to the top of voice search results — and the top is where companies need to be, since voice-based search engines typically read only the first result aloud to the user.

Prioritize Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are the parts of a result that Google Home and Google Assistant read aloud in response to a voice search query. In addition to reading the information aloud, Google’s tools also typically cite the name of the website that provided the result, making featured snippets a powerful tool for putting your brand in front of potential customers, Bryson Meunier writes at Search Engine Land.

Unsurprisingly, information on how to create solid featured snippets has gotten a great deal more attention in recent months. Tips for creating content that lands in the featured snippet spot from Julia McCoy, again, at the Content Marketing Institute include:

• Answer the questions readers are asking. “How does,” “how to” and “what is” queries commonly result in featured snippet responses.
• Make your answer short and to the point. Content that doesn’t answer the question won’t get the featured snippet.
• Create high-quality longform content. Featured snippets use the same ranking system as the rest of Google, so quality content is a must. Strive to offer the best answer available.

Finally, stay on top of Google’s news on featured snippets. The company published a guide to featured snippets in early 2018, authored by Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison for speech. This guide provides excellent insights from the search engine itself.

In addition to targeting Google’s featured snippet option, optimizing short pieces of content for other platforms, like Bing-based Siri and Alexa, is becoming easier. Schema’s “speakable” extension, set for rollout in late 2018, will allow website owners to indicate snippets of text that are particularly suited to being read aloud by voice assistants, giving content creators the ability to indicate to voice systems what they should read to users.

Why It’s Time to Befriend Voice Search in Content Marketing

Voice search use continues to grow as users discover its accessibility and speed mesh well with their needs. Adapting content to incorporate voice considerations can make it more closely match natural speech, read more engagingly and provide clearer, more concise answers — all of which puts that content, and your company, front and center of search results.

Images by: sifotography/©123RF Stock Photo, dragonimages/©123RF Stock Photo, Kaufdex

The call to action. It’s your bottom line. The reason you brought eyeballs to your page. The only thing you really want visitors to do.

So why are so many CTAs just plain bad?

Seventy percent of B2B blog posts and Web pages contained no call to action at all five years ago, according to Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends. That number has decreased somewhat over time, but for many businesses an increase in quantity doesn’t mean an increase in quality.

Here, we’re going to break down the biggest reasons CTAs fail, the best ways to avoid these mistakes and what tools you can use to create calls to action that attract better prospects.

Ugh: The Top Reasons CTAs Fail

“Getting prospective customers to do what you want them to do can be like herding cats,” Dan Shewan writes at WordStream. “They abandon shopping carts before checking out, they don’t sign up for your beautifully written newsletter, and they don’t even have the common courtesy to read your blog posts all the way to the end [editor’s note: ahem].”

A good call to action, however, can give that herd of cats some direction. It can focus the attentions of your visitors and give them clear next steps.

But bad CTAs do the opposite: They drive people away.

Here’s how too many of them do it:

1. They’re Too Vague

“Buy now,” “Submit” and “Click here” are three of the most popular calls to action online today — partly because they’re also the default language in a number of website-building tools.

They’re also deadly vague. Buy what now? Submit to whom and for what purpose? Click here for what?

In a world of increasing privacy and security concerns, where nearly every Internet user has been burned by a virus at least once, this kind of vagueness doesn’t cause excitement. It causes wariness — not only of the CTA itself, but of your brand as a whole.

2. They Don’t Call Users to Action

One thing the vague “Click here” and “Buy now” CTAs have going for them: They start with a strong, specific action verb. “Click” and “buy” are concrete actions. They’re something readers can do.

Unfortunately, many calls to action are, technically speaking, not a call to action at all. They may provide information, but they don’t ask the reader to do anything, Billy McCaffrey writes at WordStream.

For instance, while “our latest white paper is available here” is great information, it doesn’t tell users what to do with that information. Users who know how to download your white papers or who have done so before may motivate themselves to download this one, but first-time readers may not want to figure out the process.

Worse, they may not feel as if the white paper is for them — that they have been specifically invited to download it for their own use.

3. They’re Unreadable

A call to action won’t be followed if it isn’t read. And when users typically spend mere seconds on a web page, the quicker they spot the call to action the more likely they are to follow it.

Yet many calls to action are so poorly designed, it’s almost as if the business doesn’t really want people to find them. Placing your CTA out of sequence with the decision-making process, crowding it out with other elements or using a color scheme that blends in with other page elements are three of the top mistakes that cause a call to action to disappear into the ether, according to Aaron Agius at Entrepreneur.

4. They’re in the Wrong Context

CTAs are expected in certain media, like marketing emails and social media ads. In others, however, they end up cheapening your content and actually driving customers away, Jonathan Greene writes at Medium, where he argues CTAs don’t belong.

“If you think your greatest value from writing on Medium comes from profit, you are wrong,” Greene says. “The greatest value of your action on Medium is inspiring others.” Slapping a call to action on that inspiration implies that you’re not there to help or uplift, but that you want something in return.

“No piece of content will ever be more artistically successful with a call to action at the end of it,” Green noted.

Lessons From Failure: How to Make Bad CTAs Better

If it does nothing else, a call to action should call readers to act. The action called for should be strong, be specific and engage the use of the body in some way, even if it’s only to click a button or link.

Why?

According to Leo Widrich at Buffer, action words trigger the brain’s motor cortex. When the brain encounters strong action verbs, it experiences itself not only reading a word, but actually following through on the action.

And the stronger the verb, the stronger the sensation of action. “Read” and “learn,” as primarily mind-based activities, produce a relatively weak motor cortex response. “Stand,” “search” and even “click,” as movement-based activities, produce a much stronger one.

A strong, commanding action verb makes readers’ brains experience the action you call for even before they do it, which greatly increases the chances they’ll take the next step.

Beyond the copy, here are four things you can start doing today to improve your CTAs, boost click-through rates and ultimately drive more conversions.

1. Marry Content With Design

Rounded conversion buttons set off with white space and in contrasting colors from the remainder of the page also get more attention than their more square, crowded or drab counterparts, says Agius. In addition, high-quality images that support the goal of your call to action can help. Just make sure these images don’t compete with the CTA itself.

According to Steve Young at Unbounce, testimonials and case studies near a CTA can increase conversion rates by 68.7 percent — but only if they’re the right kind of testimonials and case studies. Look for short, snappy copy that’s “both believable and impressive,” says Agius.

2. Think Long(er) Term

When you’re generating or contributing content to a platform like Medium, Greene recommends limiting your CTAs to links to other Medium pieces you’ve done, to your main website or to an email list.

From the website or email list, you can start drawing in potential customers.

To some, this sounds counterintuitive: How do more steps lead to more conversion? Here, it’s because you’re building on the reader’s existing interest, inspiration or investment. The original article creates that sense of emotional and intellectual connectedness. The journey to your website or email list continues it.  

3. Personalize Your Content

In early 2018, HubSpot’s Jeffrey Vocell ran a study that looked at more than 300,000 CTAs. The CTAs he considered fell into one of three buckets:

• Basic CTAs
• Multivariate CTAs that were being split-tested)
• Smart CTAs that responded dynamically to viewer locations, browser languages and many other user variables

What he found wasn’t surprising: The smart CTAs convert much better than the others. Dynamic CTAs that can speak to someone’s unique profile convert at about twice the rate of other CTAs.

Why such a profound uptick in conversions? Because smart CTAs let you serve someone “serving them content that reflects their current level of interest and knowledge on the subject,” Vocell writes.

“Blog posts and web pages might cater to multiple audiences at the same time, but if they all have the same CTA on them regardless of who’s reading, you’re neglecting various portions of your audience — those people who are either too advanced for what you’re offering, or aren’t advanced enough to need it yet. Smart CTAs accommodate for these differences across the buyer’s journey.”

If you’re interested in trying out dynamic, smart CTAs, here are a few marketing automation tools you should know:

• HubSpot is one of the go-to platforms for personalized marketing. If you have the budget, it has several features that will let you personalize calls to actions on your landing pages, on your blog posts, in your emails and on other digital assets.
• SharpSpring and Experiture have some excellent dynamic CTA capabilities, as well.

4. Test Your CTAs

As you can imagine, there are scores of variables that go into someone’s decision to click “Buy Now” or “Learn More” buttons. That’s why split-testing your CTAs is so important.

“There is indeed a magic formula for creating CTAs that convert,” Robin Nichols writes at AB Tasty. “Test, test and test again. In the real world, behind every successful campaign, every effective call-to-action, are dozens or even hundreds of A/B test runs.”

In general, the variables worth testing break into five categories, Elana Chiari writes at MailUp. Those include:

• Color. Think back to what Agius recommended about button design. Does it make sense to change a red button to a green one? Test that hypothesis.  
• Size. “The button should be large enough to be noticeable, but an excessive size may be too aggressive and detrimental to the user experience,” Chiari writes. Run a test to find out where that “too aggressive line is.”
• Position. On landing pages, it’s usually a good idea to have your CTA above the fold. In a blog post, it might make sense to have a newsletter signup at the end of the post, or perhaps someone in the middle of the copy. Test those possibilities to find out what works best
• Copy. In Agius’ piece, he points to a study that found changing a CTA from “Get Your Membership” to the more specific “Find Your Gym and Get Membership” resulted in 213 percent more clicks.
• Design. Do rounded buttons really outperform square ones? Don’t trust someone’s recommendations. Run that test yourself.

Two of the best tools for getting started with A/B testing are Optimizely and VWO.

How to Say What You Mean in a CTA

Your CTA should call readers to a specific action. But how exactly do you call for the right action at each point of the sales funnel? “Any CTA is better than no CTA,” says Neil Patel, “but it helps if you have a strategy that propels leads deeper into, not out of, your sales funnel.”

Every SaaS company wants to captivate (and convert) potential customers, but the way to do so isn’t always intuitive, especially at the top of the sales funnel.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common CTAs seen throughout the funnel and how well they do their job.

‘Follow Us on Social!’

This CTA is one of the most popular ways to draw potential customers closer. It appeals to the 50 percent of qualified leads who aren’t ready to make a purchase decision while encouraging them to stay in touch via social media.

Here, the CTA starts with a strong action verb, “follow.” It includes some specifics (follow us). It even tells the visitor where they’ll be doing the following … sort of.

Where does this link lead? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, another page listing all those options? To boost the rate at which visitors click this CTA, make sure they know exactly which social media platform they’re getting when they do. Something like “Follow Us on Twitter!” would do the job.

Or punch it up even further. Serial entrepreneur Jeremy Smith recommends using a call to action that implies the person clicking is becoming part of a story that only gets better. Here, that option might read “Join Us on Facebook!” or “Continue the Journey on Twitter!”

‘Download Our [Lead Magnet]’

Ebooks, white papers, worksheets, info packets: The list of potential lead magnets is endless, but these tools are only valuable to you or to prospective contacts if they’re actually downloaded.

“Download Our Ebook” asks for a bit more involvement from the visitor than a social media like or follow. Here, you’re asking them to commit sufficient interest to want that ebook, white paper or other free prize in your digital box of cereal.

So, how do you convert “I’ll click Like on Facebook” visitors to “I’ll read this free ebook” visitors?

Lilach Bullock recommends involving your visitors in the CTA directly by letting them “speak” through a CTA in the first person. “Download Our Ebook” invites them to take a step, but “Send Me My Free Ebook Today” puts them in the position of asking to participate in that step. And because asking signals buy-in, it also encourages buy-in.

‘Free Trial’

As a CTA, this one…isn’t. There’s no verb at all, much less an actionable verb. Sure, visitors love adjectives like “free” and nouns like “trial,” both of which offer them the chance to make their own decisions about value without requiring a commitment. But what do you want your visitor to do?

Despite its weaknesses, “Free Trial” is still one of the most popular CTAs out there. To improve its conversion power, focus on clarifying exactly what your visitor gets when they click it, Patel recommends.

For instance, try “Free Trial Version,” “Instant Download – Free Trial Version,” or “Try Our Free Trial.” For that first-person experience, experiment with “Yes, I want my free trial!” or “I want to try [Software] for free.”

‘Free 30 Days’

“Free 30 Days” suffers from many of the same defects as “Free Trial,” but it has one difficulty all its own: It threatens to deposit the user at a credit card information form they aren’t prepared to fill out, either because they don’t have their card handy or because they don’t want to share that much information.

The result? Often, a quick click of the back button and a moment of revulsion.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In December 2017, Amazon introduced its app users to a swipe-based 1-Click checkout, as Sarah Perez at TechCrunch reports. The swipe bar contained the CTA “Swipe to buy with 1-Click.”

The results? Approval, not only for the swipe function itself but also for the CTA. Amazon shoppers knew exactly what would happen if they swiped.

Use that same level of specificity if you want users to land on a payment page in the right moment.

‘Buy Now’

“Buy Now” can learn something from Amazon’s 1-Click swipe bar as well.

Here, the value is in being placed alongside a less commitment-heavy CTA, e.g. “Start your free trial.” Part of what made Amazon’s 1-Click so popular, notes Perez, is that users not only knew what they were getting by swiping, but they could also discern how it differed from clicking “Add to Cart.”

Users in a hurry could 1-click, while those who intended to buy but wanted to browse still had the cart option. Win-win.

If You Forget Everything Else, Remember This

To turn your call to action into customer action:

• Use short, strong, concrete action verbs.
• Design for visibility and appeal.
• Place your call to action with the user’s decision-making process.

And let your own taste be your guide. If you’re intrigued and excited by your CTA’s design, placement and wording, your audience likely will be, too.

But then test your design against alternatives, anyway.

Images by: Miguel Bruna, Clem Onojeghuo, Mikael Kristenson